I was over at FB perusing Puppet Maker's Workshop group and one of the puppet sellers asked who they should contact if a website was copying their items.  I was confused at first and asked them for more details but then went digging and found the site they where talking about. It looks like the spammers/cheaters are stealing content from etsy shops and using it on their site to help get click throughs on their ads. Don't want to promote them by linking but you can type in kidstoysonsales then a dot then a com to find them. More then likely there are tons of other such site doing this focused on different categories.

Beyond reporting the domain to etsy and seeing if they do something about it there is not much that can be done to stop them form doing this but if you can't beat them then at least take advantage of them. I told the puppet maker that they should make sure to always include a link back to their main shop on etsy in the description for each item. Then at least you may get some traffic back to the real site. It is kind of the same idea as putting a water mark on your photos of your dot com so that if someone uses then somewhere else at leas folks know where to look for the original content.

While we are on the subject. I notice there are a lot of site out there that "legit" but pretty much doing the same thing with youtube videos. I am sure you have noticed them if you are on FB.  They "report" on the content of the videos. They embed a youtube video then come up with some sensational head line similar to this "Man came home and you won't believe what happened next!".  These sites are only interested in getting you to their site so you might click on their ads.  So same thing applies. Make sure your videos have information in them to get them back to the source. In this case it is not quite as bad as the first since they are simply embedding the videos at YouTube and you can still easily get back to the original  but still a good idea to fill the actual video with info.

Oh and did you realize that really even FB is doing this?  Notice that when you type in a website that you get a preview in your post of the site?  Pay attention if you own a website or you may end up with content in the preview at FB you don't want there. It can get a bit complicated but this may get you started. https://developers.facebook.com/docs/sharing/best-practices  If you happen to use something like Wordpress or another popular CMS make sure to check and see what add-ons they have for this type of thing.

Um, you can always try and use the DMCA. US hosts of websites, including YouTube, have to abide by it. They have to provide a DMCA contact, basically a legal contact and you can send a request of removal of the offending material. It's what I did with ehow, and if the website admin doesn't do anything about it you can also send a DMCA request through to the actual web host itself. Google for more info on how to use DMCA requests.

Personally I would make sure to pull as much non-watermarked content as possible, send some DMCAs where possible, but not worry about the rest. Learned the hard way that nobody gives a crap about copyrights and its too hard to police on your own. Don't pull your hair out over it, it's a waste of energy.

I remember something like this happening with print on demand sites like Zazzle. It is unfortunately hard to fight, but at the very least, if they are only doing it for affiliate sales, at least the original seller gets something out of it (extra advertising.)

I've also seen something like this with blog articles. They repost articles from different blogs on their site, but also include a link to that blog. I assume this is to get google to redirect to their site.

I've also seen something like this with blog articles. They repost articles from different blogs on their site, but also include a link to that blog. I assume this is to get google to redirect to their site.

Nah, like the photo stealing it's about getting free content. Writers, photographers, they cost money. Copypasta is free. And there's little to no chance of actual consequences, unlike breaking into a house.  In addition there's a huge misunderstanding out there that if you offer an attribution, it somehow absolves you of copyright infringement. So ignorance combined with greed really.

Ah, okay. So this is less about getting content that fits a certain theme (like a sports website gathering up blog posts that mention anything to do with baseball), and more about just getting any kind of content at all?

Ah, okay. So this is less about getting content that fits a certain theme (like a sports website gathering up blog posts that mention anything to do with baseball), and more about just getting any kind of content at all?

it's both. the spammers dont care about the topic and will steal anything, those that are either ignorant or greedy will steal anything that looks like a fit. either way the originators are screwed. - i had one fellow puppeteer dare to tell me they had decades-old pamphlets of content - word for word the same as mine - which they 'later posted to their website'. their site was about 5 years newer and they couldnt produce the pamphlet when challenged. dont be surprised if you see your own stuff appearing elsewhere, nor the gall of some who will insist it is and always was their own.

this is not including places like ehow. their writers trick is to plagiarise in such a way as to avoid copyright (freelancers are often requested to 'rewrite' which is a dog whistle for plagiarism) but is basically a slightly edited version of whatever you came up with. because its not word for word they can insist someone just had the same idea as you. the more novel the content the easier it is to prove that untrue.

I remember seeing requests on Mechanical Turk for people to reword articles. I am going to assume the requesters were also trying to plagiarize.

I remember seeing requests on Mechanical Turk for people to reword articles. I am going to assume the requesters were also trying to plagiarize.

yep, i see it all the time on freelance sites. of course publishing professionals call rewrites 'edits' which is a legitimate thing, so whenever i see someone request a rewrite it's pretty clear what they mean. and it's not 'tidy up my grammar and spelling'.

(lol, she says with shitty punctuation   )

I wanted to update this thread because I recently remembered I'd read about Etsy tackling copyright issues and the problems of having to do it. The thing is that Etsy doesn't know who made what and in the process of demanding infringing users respect a seller's rights, the seller found that Etsy can be quite difficult to deal with. One thing that's happened is that Etsy starts demanding proof of you being the creator (as you're making the claim of ownership of photos) and that has lead to numerous people posting pics on their sales pages of them, in the shot, as they make their items. This makes it easier to claim ownership as Etsy can actually see you in the building process.

This itself has further issues because I also read that Etsy wanted details posted to them as to how, step by step, an item is made - for proof again that you know what you're doing and aren't just scamming people I guess.

Anyway the point is that further ways to prevent copyright issues is to also take a pic of you in your studio doing your thing, so that it makes it easier to point Etsy towards a clear-cut decision. The added benefit is that it makes your shop a little more personable and a little less like a reverse-ATM experience.